The benefits of brain damage

ET Bureau|

Feb 15, 2010, 05.53 AM IST

Now , this might be heresy for billions of spiritual types the world over, and cause derisory certitude from our own deeply-religious millions, but those perfidious science-wallahs have come up with another explanation for belief in the ineffable. Italian researchers have 'found' that belief in matters spiritual may be, well, a plain case of brain damage.

In other words, the little grey cells have to be dysfunctional for us to forget about ourselves. Sure, the debate is as old as the hills, or maybe as old as the time since man first felt some shock and awe at things. But one would have to concede that despite all the armature of logic, reason and science, the desire to believe in something bigger than ourselves has proved quite enduring.

Or, as the people on the other side of the fence would aver, the fear of things retributory is yet to be elided. A bit like that bus advertising campaign by the atheist lot in London , with slogans like "God probably doesn't exist. So, go ahead and have a good time." Yet, there's a catch in all this.

The odd feeling that explanatory verbiage put out by the aforementioned scientists doesn't still quite round off the square. It would, obviously, be a tad taxing to explain to a spiritual type that his condition was due to the fact that "damage to the posterior parietal areas induce fast changes of a stable personality dimension related to transcendental self-referential awareness" .

But then, there's the other underlying facet to this story. The simple point to this scientific study, as well as for the general naysayers, seems to be the certainty that one has to be somewhat muddled to, well, think about others in today's world. The 'I, Me, Myself' sort of pervasive culture that surrounds us, would, in effect, tend to make the Gaia types of the world seem a bit woolly-headed.

Ergo, if you believe in some sort of universality of being, a one-ness of sorts, you are basically en route to the loony bin. As for the brain damage thesis, shouldn't we then promptly deify all those head-banging heavy-metal chaps?